What is hypnosis? Well, if you look in the dictionary it might say something like, ‘an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterized by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.’ {1} Of course this differs with all dictionary’s but it is the basic idea. The word ‘hypnosis’ itself is derived from the Greek god of sleep, hypnos.
When one thinks of hypnosis they sometimes think of the old cartoon shows like Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, or Pokemon were an item on a string, mostly a ring would be slowly swung in front of someone causing them to fall in a type of trance so that they can make the hypnotized person tell or do something they normally would not do by their on will.
As with a lot of things, it is helpful to understand the history and development of hypnosis and hypnotism. Although it is assumed that before history was recorded hypnotism was practiced throughout different cultures. In India the Hindus would sometimes take their ill to special ‘sleep temples’ where they treated them with hypnotic suggestion. In the Vedic times, 1500-500 B.C, Yogis and Rishis would use self hypnosis, also known as Sammohan, to still their minds during meditation. In 2000 B.C a man known as, the father of Chinese Medicine wrote about a technique that involved chanting and the passing of hands over the body. In ancient Greece, around the fourth and fifth century B.C, they constructed sacred ‘sleep temples’ dedicated to the god of healing, Asclepios, whose staff, with a snake wrapped around, is used for the medical symbol to this day.
Sick people would be brought to these temples where the healing would consist of the priest chanting and using magical spells to put them in to a deep trance like sleep, also called as incubation. In the duration of three days, while the person continues in the trance like state, the priest would use suggestions that would aid the person to make contact with Asclepios through their dreams, thus assisting to cure their ailments.
The modern era began in the early 1770′s Father Johann Grassnar, a priest Catholic from Klosters, Switzerland believed at that time that people who were ill were possessed by the devils, therefore they needed to be cast out before the patient could get well. He later obtained church approval for his exorcisms, claiming God was working through him to cast out the devils that possessed his patients. Grassnar would allow physicians to observe him carry out his treatments from a room that was built with seats much like a theater.
Franz Anton Mesmer was among those who viewed some of Grassnar’s performances, although, contrary to the priest, Mesmer did not feel that the patients were possessed by devils. He thought the gold crucifix was responsible for magnetizing and even hypnotizing the patients; this helped developed his notion and explanation of the results into a theory of animal magnetism.
Franz Anton Mesmer, a physician, first thought that illnesses were caused by magnetic fluids in the body getting out of balance, thus he would attempt to create a technique for his treatment ideas. He would sometimes sit the patient in front of him with their knees touching, pressing the patient’s thumb into his hand. All the while looking steadily in the patients eye’s while making ‘passes’ by moving his hands along the patient from shoulders all the way down to the arms. He would proceed to press his finger on the patient’s hypochondriac region, sometimes for a long while. Many people stated they felt odd sensations or had convolutions they said to be ‘crises’ and that were supposed to bring about the cure. Mesmer frequently would finish his therapy by playing some music on a glass harmonica, which was used as a hypnotic device. He would also often use magnets across the patients body with good success, then later began using his hands instead. Mesmer also created a word for his treatments, mesmerize.
Another treatment involved the use of an oak tub inside another tub or bucket with a lid that was in two pieces and perforated to enable the passage of moveable bent rods, which were adjusted to different parts of the patient’s body. A long rope was loosely placed around the limbs of the patient that was secured to a ring in the lid. Mesmer would touch them with a rod and they would become magnetized and then they would go in to a state of crisis; which they would arise fully cured. At the bottom of the tub were bottles laid with the neck towards the center while other bottles filled with magnetized water laid with the neck pointed outward. Water would sometimes fill the tub with powdered glass or iron fillings. Mesmer’s rise and popularity, for a time, aided in hypnosis to be used as a medical treatment.
James Braid is perhaps the most well known of the contributor to the rise of hypnosis for the reason that he was the first to adopt the word, hypnotism for his treatment. For this reason, he is considered by many to be the first hypnotherapist. He became interested in Mesmer’s idea and the way it had evolved, however, he rejected the idea that magnetism caused hypnosis. Therefore stating the, mesmeric trance, was a physiological process. That the prolonged attention on a bright object that moved or a similar object of fixation. He also theorized that, protracted ocular fixation, fatigued certain areas of the brain, causing a trance.
He defined, hypnotism, as a condition of mental concentration that tends to lead to forms of progressive relaxation called, nervous sleep. Braid later found the word, hypnotism or nervous sleep, wrong for his meaning or misleading, saying that it is not a true sleep, only for a small minority. Rather the word, monoideism was better suited; it meant to concentrate upon a single idea and as a description for the more alert state experienced by the other people. However, hypnotism remained.
Hypnosis is still unusual to some in how it works. There have been times a hypnotist will instruct a patient, during suggestion, that one of their limbs are becoming heavy. Thereafter, the hypnotist would ask them to attempt lifting that limb; they could not. It wasn’t until later that it was discovered that the part of the brain responsible for left side-body movement, right motor cortex, was intercepted by a region called the precuneus. Precuneus is a section committed in part to mental imagery and personal memory. This signified the intense and figurative language by the hypnotist was thought as real by the precuneus. This particular part of the brain would then relay the impossibility of the work to the motor cortex, as though the motor cortex is sure of the idea that it can not move the limb, therefore it does not send the message to move.
It is also shown that when the brain is hypnotized, it suspends conscious functions by augmenting flow of blood into the occipital region as well as lessening cortical arousal. This causes the ‘opening of the mind’ this is the factor that allows suggestions to enter freely without being examined against ones predispositions. After more studies, it is shown that there are noted changes in the prefrontal, occipital, of course, and temporal areas of the brain which explains why the trance is commonly associated with a feeling of deep relaxation.
Hypnosis is a common practice now and more widely excepted in the medical field then it was back in the 1700’s. The hypnosis technique will continue to evolve as physicians strive to learn the affects of how it works on the body and mind. If it were not for Mesmer’s interest, hypnosis would not be considered a medical practice; leading others such as Braid to experiment based on his ideas and studies to form it in to a base for hypnotism today.
1. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypnosis
